Amazing Contest

Hullo everyone! I'm home from holiday now (it was fantastic, post will be coming up on one of my blogs after i've sorted out the 500+ photos) but unfortunately have caught a nasty bug :( poor Claire had it from about our first day of holiday and i caught it near the end. I either have it worse or just make a lot more fuss than her :P
Anyway being ill may be a good thing for my blog cause all i have the energy to do is sit around eating tomato soup and toast and watching telly in my pyjamas (so basically like always, but i have an excuse to not actually get on with anything important) so will hopefully get some posts done :)

A lot of people who read my blog probably found it through Mizz Worthy's Illamasqua contests. In fact some of my very first posts were entries to the Heroes and Villains contest around the end of last year (they were pretty much all terrible!). Since then I have entered several looks for each of the two contests there have been since and have been lucky enough to come in second place both times!
Well there's a new contest and it's bigger and better than ever!

http://www.mizzworthy.com/2010/09/illamasqua-contest-mystery-guest.html

The prize is just amazing - the entire Art Of Darkness collection plus an intensive 2-day makeup course.

Anyway this is super late so i am sorry but hopefully you will still be able to enter!

I have quite a few ideas and will be entering any that turn out well. However this time I am pretty sure i will not come anywhere close to winning. The scope of this contest is just too big, so many amazing, talented people entering I don't think my ideas and ability will stand a chance. Also I guess i wouldn't be fair if i did win seeing as I've come in second twice already. But it will be fun and i hope you will enjoy my looks :)

Speaking of the Art of Darkness collection, i do still have a write up of the bloggers event coming and i am sorry about the delay!

Mizz Worthy and Illamasqua Elementals Contest - Fire

This is my final entry for the contest (i actually did 2 more looks but they were rubs and will be confined to the depths of my picture folder for all time) and is based around the element of fire. One of my failed looks was a sort of take on traditional punky makeup but using fire colours of red, orange and yellow and i decided to again use a punk aesthetic but try and create a look based on smoke of fire instead of the flames. The idea behind going for a punky look was that, while all the elements can be dangerous, it is fire that is regarded as the most so (in my opinion anyway) while water, air and earth all have tranquil aspects to them fire is mostly thought of as a destructive force. And i thought this went with the idea of nihilism and the shock and fear of punks conservative people often had in the 70s.
So this is sort of my take on a smokey eye but taken to the extreme (I am useless at a regular smokey eye because i'm pretty bad at blending, but with this look i thought i could get away with it being messy)

 

 

 

I did my face as usual and added a little red eyeshadow under my cheek bones and down to my jawline. Then i applied a thick rim of black eyeshadow around my eye before blending it (as best i could) up, down and out to my hairline. I also very lightly blended in some red eyeshadow and lined my waterline in red. Then i tapped on some red glitter (this time actually eye safe!) and stroked some over black mascara too. finally i added a little of the black shadow and red glitter over my lips.

I used:

Urban Decay Surreal Skin cream-to-powder foundation

Avon translucent powder

Sugarpill Love + eyeshadow

Sugarpill Bulletproof eyeshadow

Kryolan Red eyeliner pencil

Red cosmetic glitter

black mascara

Also i am a ginger now :)

Mizz Worthy and Illamasqua Elementals Contest - Ice

 I had so much fun with my first two looks for this contest i decided to do some more :) This is a second entry using the element of Water but this time i wanted a sort of Ice Maiden look.

 

 

 

First i painted my whole face white and powdered with a white translucent powder and then an iridescent shimmer face powder. I contoured my nose, eyes, cheeks and forehead with blue eyeshadow and applied it lightly to my lips too. Then i used the white side of a double ended mascara on my eyelashes and eyebrows and then pressed an opalescant, chunky glitter on top (the glitter i used specifically says not to use it on the eyes but i paid no heed to this. Oooh i'm a rebel!). Finally i slicked my lips with a blueish, iridescent lipgloss and sprayed my face with a setting spray before shaking large flakes of glitter all over my face :)

I used:

Kryolan White face paint
Screen face white powder
Aromaleigh Opal powder
Sugarpill Tako eyeshadow
Illamasqua Medium pencil
Estee Lauder crystal flash lipgloss
Sleek double ended mascara
Rocket City glitter
Early learning centre 'snow glitter'

Hmm i think i prefer my first 'water' look, but this was a lot of fun to do too :)

Mizz Worthy and Illamasqua Elementals Contest - Water

 The second element i decided to try and convey was water. I wanted to make a sort of creature-makeup and tried to look like some sort of watery spirit creature. I was attempting to look like i wasn't wearing makeup, but that i just naturally looked like this. It was a lot of fun! :)

  

  

Ok it looks awful with the flash, but i wanted to show the shimmery skin properly :P

 

The first thing i did was block out my eyebrows with a glue stick and powder and then applied foundation heavilly to properly cover them up. Then i started covering my face with shimmering blue eyeshadows and various other bits and pieces. I contoured a little with a green shadow and then used the Illamasqua liquid metals and lipgloss to make little 'scales' by making little fingertip marks under my cheekbones, down my nose, on my chin and forehead and the sides of my face. I added some shimmery white shadow as a highlight on my cheekbones and forehead. Then i put glitter on my face using a round brush to make sort of circles of glitter (again trying to look like scales). My lips were covered with blue lipstick and gloss and then patted a lot of glitter on. Finally i patted some of the blue shadow onto my waterline to try and get rid of the red (i wish i could have done this to the tear duct too, but that would have been a very stupid idea :P). And then i teased my hair to try and make it look like i was underwater and pated some eyeshadow and glitter on it too.

I think it ended up looking pretty good but i worked over it a bit too much and ended up losing the look of scales i had tried to achieve. I only wish i'd bothered to continue it down to my shoulders so the photos would look better :(

I used:

gosh x-ceptional wear foundation in porcelain

dainty doll concealer in fair

Avon powder

aromaleigh forget-me-not

evil shades banshee

evil shades moonlit

evil shades silver bullet

aromaleigh greenbrier

illamasqua liquid metals in enrapture, phenomena and surge the new one

illamasqua intense lip gloss in galactic

morgana minerals serenity

evil shades lip gloss banshee

wet n wild glitter (no name)

morgana minerals twinkling teal glitter

Mizz Worthy and Illamasqua Elementals Contest - Air

Mizz Worthy and Illamasqua are having another amazing contest! I adore these collaborative competitions and have entered the previous 2 (i was lucky enough to win second prize in the last one :)). Mizz Worthy is one of my favourite bloggers and, as you know if you read my blog frequently, Illamasqua is my favourite makeup brand. These contests always have a wonderful, fun and exciting concept and they provide me with the motivation to get off my chubby butt and really do something interesting with my looks. 

This time the theme is Elementals. Go here and enter yourself!

I had a bit of trouble thinking of an idea to do with the element for air simply because it's, in a way, the most abstract of the elements. It's invisible for one thing :P The others can instantly conjure up images in my mind and have clear colours and symbols associated with them. Air is more ethereal and subtle.

However i didn't want to do an ethereal or subtle look. So i came up with an idea that would let me be bold and brash while still representing the element of air. My idea was that i was standing in a wind so strong that it managed to blow my makeup from one side of the face to the other.

Anyway here is what i came up with:

  

 (a close up of my lips so you can see that i am nowhere near my natural lip shape :P)

To achieve this look i basically did the right side of my face as normal (apart from the lips), then did the left side, dragging my blush and eyelashes to the right (i also attempted to do this with my eyebrows but they did not want to cooperate) and i put the wing of my eyeliner and the false eyelash on the inner corner instead of the outer (it was horrible doing this, it feels completely unnatural). Finally i redrew my lips completely in a wonky, picasso-esque shape, dragging the cupids bow in a slant to the right and extending the right corner.

And to top it off i dragged my hair to the one side.

I think it was a good conceit but not sure how well i pulled it off. What do you reckon, can you see the idea i was going for?

I used:

Face:

urban decay surreal skin foundation in illusion

no 7 powder

kryolan Frambosia (not sure if this is meant as a blush or eyeshadow. I used it as blush)

Eyes:

2true eyeliner

black mascara

Nyx false eyelashes

clear brow gel on my eyebrow

Lips:

Barry m lip laquer pencil in no 2

Please tell me what you think, constructive criticism is welcome as always. Expect quite a few more entries from me, this contest has got my creative juices flowing :)

Mizz Worthy/Illamasqua contest entry - chance

So here is my fourth and final look for the contest.
This one is basically a straight beauty look, the colours are unusual but otherwise the idea is the important thing, not the finished look.
Basically i was thinking outside the box by not thinking about what i was going to do.
Sorry, this probably sounds really confusing, it's hard to explain.

I decided to do my makeup in a simple style i often use, but with a difference. I gathered up all of my Kryolan Aquacolours:


then i popped them in a bag:



Then i would close my eyes and pick a colour from the bag. Whatever i picked i would have to use for the next part of my makeup (i pulled the colours out and applied in the order i usually do my makeup: eyeshadow, eye highlight colour, eyeliner, eyebrows, blusher and finally lipstick). So it was basically a straight, normal beauty look, but without any thought on my part as to the colours, it was left entirely up to chance.

And this is how i ended up:


So again this makeup isn't so much about the finished look, it's about the concept and idea behind it.

Oh and by the way, kryolan aqua colours are great for face paint or eyeshadows but don't use them on your lips, it's perfectly safe but feels absolutely horrible!

Mizz Worthy/Illamasqua contest entry 3 - Polka dotty

I decided to take a break from painting my face black by painting it pink! :P

This look was inspired by one of my favourite artists, Yayoi Kusama, who has seen hallucinations of patterns (usually polka dots) over everything for years and brings these patterns into her work.

Magical huh?

I was also interested after my face-painting yesterday to do a look that focused on the parts of the face we usually ignore. So i coloured my face, but left the bits i would usually cover (lips, eyes, cheeks) plain. Also i wanted the clean-skin bits to be circular like the little polka dots.



So what i did was just cover my face in little stickers, paint over the top with a neon pink kryolan aquacolour, then peeled them off and washed the bits of my face i wanted to be clean. And that was that. Again the execution is not great, some of the stickers slipped off my face so there are some patches where there are less spots then the rest of the face.

Oh and i wanted to say, while the look i created is completely my own design, i certainly am not the first person to paint polka dots on themselves, in fac Yayoi herself has covered her entire body in spots before.

Mizz Worthy/ Illamasqua contest entry - "reverse Rococo"

My second entry for Mizz Worthy's amazing 'think outside the box' contest.

So i fancied making another look straight after i'd finished my 'inside the box' look, so was trying to think of a way to incoporate my face partly painted black (because that face paint i used takes a hell of a lot of scrubbing to get off).
I suddenly got an idea that i personally think is really cool.

I adore the fashions of men and women from the 1700s and in the past i've dressed up as a rococo woman. The makeup they wore was incredibly dramatic, with faces painted stark white, red cheeks and lips and black eyebrows and beauty marks drawn on, here's an example from the net:



so i thought what i would do was create a rococo look but with the colours inverted. Here is the picture above inverted:



So here's what i came up with:




Once again, the execution is not perfect, but i think while the look is rather freakish it's also very interesting and cool . I used black face paint all over my face, layering it several times to make it as opaque as possible, then used a shimmery blue/green eyeshadow (it's a mac i've depotted and lost the name of :/) on my cheeks and lips, white mascara on my lashes, a tiny bit of pink eyeshadow (it's not in the example i found but rococo women sometimes used blue eyeshadow) and then drew on my eyebrows and beauty marks with white liquid eyeliner.

And now, the moment of truth! If i invert the photos of myself it looks like:




:D Pretty cool huh? Again, not perfect but similar to the original rococo inspiration! I'm pleased with the job i did and think it was in the spirit of thinking outside the box. It was so fun to paint up my face in such a bizarre, unusual way.

I'm hoping to squeeze a couple of looks in tomorrow before the contest ends and they won't involve me painting my face solid black! :P

MizzWorthy Illamasqua contest entry - "Inside the box"

This is the first look i came up with for the fabulous Mizz Worthy's contest, the theme of which is 'Think outside the box'.

I decided it would fun to do a look actually using a 'box' by drawing a square on my face, in this way i'd be thinking outside the box by being inside a box :P




As you can see i didn't do the best job, it is much, much harder than you would think to draw a square, straight shape on the curves of your face! I also wanted the main focus to be on the square framing the face, but knew i still wanted to do something different with the rest of the look, so i decided to do a twist on my 'standard' beauty look (big eyelashes, dolly-pink cheeks and painted lips).

I first used my NYX highlight liquid all over the face to make it a bit lighter than usual and add some luminosity, then i set it with ELF complexion perfection. I used 4 pieces of masking tape to make a square around my face, i drew along the edges and peeled the tape off, then filled between the line and the rest of my face with a black face paint. It then took me about half an hour to get it straight. Not only it it just difficult to draw a straight line on a curved surface, but on some places you actually have to make the lines curve in order to appear straight D:

The rest of the face was very simple, i applied NYX false eyelashes and some mascara thenused my ELF eyebrow treat and tame to brush my eyebrows upwards to give them an unruly look. I just drew circles on my cheeks with a Barry M pink eye kohl and made a sort of angular-cupids bow lip with a matching pink Barry M lip liner.

I quite like the results, i think it's a good idea, just poorly executed. At one point i was going to just keep it very simple by just having the box and no other makeup, but i think it looked a lot better when i added the strange clown-like face into the box.

Mizz Worthy's Super Heroes Contest - this time a good guy!

My Fourth and (probably) final Entry!

This time, the Super Heroine Silk Spectre I from The Watchmen



The Silk Spectre was one of the original 'minutemen' a group of 'costumed heroes'. She was seen as an action-hero pin-up girl and there were villains who didn't mind being caught by her!
The Silk Spectre was a hero in the 40s, and is shown as having classic pin-up style of makeup. I decided to go for this style, but add in the colours of her costume, yellow and black. I wanted a look that was oxymoronically both retro and modern. The look had to be glamourous and not too over-the-top due to her sexy symbol status.









My eyebrows were a bit darker in real life than they look here, the flash made the black pencil look brown.

I used:
Avon personal match Tinted Moisturiser in Light
Dainty Doll Concealer in Fair
Mac Blot Powder in Light
Illamasqua illuminator in Odyssey
Mac Frankly Scarlet Blusher
Too Faced Liquif-Eye Shadow collection (i used Oscar and 1/2 Steel Magnolias)
Rimmel Glam eyes liquid eyeliner in black
Lancome Oscillation Mascara in black
Kryolan Aqua colour in black
Avon brow glimmerstick in Black
and a black rhinestone for a beauty mark.

And i think that's it for now!
Tomorrow i'm travelling back home, after that i'm going to show off all my lovely purchases :)

Mizz Worthy's Super Heroes and Villains Contest, entry 3

This time I'm Batman's arch-nemesis, the Joker!


The Joker is usually played as a completely insane psychopath. He has the appearance of a clown, due to falling into a vat of chemicals which bleached his skin, contorting his face into a constant smile and turning his hair green.
My inspiration came from the fact that, until Heath Ledger's amazing performance, the Joker is portrayed as an incredibly dapper man, groomed and polished. So i wanted to make a feminine style which looked groomed, but hinted at something sinister. I also went with his usual colour scheme of green, red and purple.









I used Illamasqua Illuminator in Odyssey all over my face to make it pale and shimmering. Then i lightly contoured and lined part of my face with a green eyeshadow from H&M. I used Mac powder blush in Frankly Scarlet, extending it to my temples. I drew a smile over my natural lip shape and filled it in with Illamasqua Intense Lip Gloss in Fierce. I used Opia green glittery eyeliner and Opia green mascara on my lashes and eyebrows.

Mizz Worthy's Super Heroes and Villains contest entry 2

This time i chose another Batman Villain, The Riddler!



The Riddler is a very flamboyant villain, obsessed with puzzles. He taunts Batman and the police by sending them complex clues and riddles hinting at his next crime.

My main inspiration came from Jim Carrey's portrayal of The Riddler in Batman Forever, i loved how over-the-top he was. While most of the Riddlers designs from the comic and TV series has him in green accented with purple, i loved the shocking pinky-orange of his hair.
My idea was to create a sort of mask made out of questions marks, with a green face and orange details. I didn't manage to do this one as well as i was hoping, but i was pleased with how symmetrical i got the question marks.







and sticking my tongue out at a poodle:


Here is what i used.
Ben Nye Magicake Aqua Paint in Lime Green
Dainty Doll concealer
a Green H&M eyeshadow
A green from Mad Minerals (the name has rubbed off)
a Black Avon eyebrow pencil
Kryolan Aqua Colour in Black
An orange claire's accessories liquid eyeliner on the eyelashes and bottom lip
A little bit of Illamasqua Intense Lipgloss in Petulant.

Mizz Worthy's Super Heroes and Villains contest

So here's the first makeup look of mine to be shown in this blog!
I decided it would be a really good starting point for my makeup experiments to enter this competition.

So, here's the villain i took my inspiration from, Batman's enemy Two-Face.



Once Two-Face was Harvey Dent, the DA of Gotham and Batman's Ally. Then he suffered a horrible accident where one side of his face was covered in acid and completely disfigured. He went insane and decided to base his answer to all decisions on the flip of a special two-headed coin (one side is disfigured with a scratch). Two-Face is still able to do good if the coin tells him to, but has no hesitation to do evil if it lands scratched face up.

Originally i was going to try going really over the top, like his makeup in both the Batman films he's appeared in, but then i got thinking about how his face got disfigured: acid. This made me think of some horrible pictures i'd seen where those acid peels people can get to improve their skin has gone wrong. So i decided to base my makeup around a modern, female Two-Face. One side is a pretty, 'everyday' look, the other a terrible, damaged face. Please excuse my very out of character pajamas.













I'm on holiday at the moment, so i'm really limited to what makeup i can wear. Unfortunately i didn't bring my foundation, so i couldn't make the 'pretty' side as groomed looking as i wanted.

On the 'ugly' side i used:
pva glue to create the peeling skin
Mac blush in Frankly Scarlet to create redness over various parts of the skin.
Mac Blot powder in Light
Lancome Oscillation mascara in black (i then pinched the eyelashes together to make them very clumped)
and Too-Faced (how apt!) Liquif-eye shadow collection to make the under eye shadows (i used 3 colours, a greenish brown, a purple and a blue, none of them have names as they are exclusive to the collection)

For the 'pretty' side i used:

Illamasqua illuminator in Odyssey on the brow bone and cheek bone
Dainty Doll Concealer in Fair
Avon Personal March tinted moisturiser in Light
Kryolan blush/eyeshadow (i've forgotten which it is actually meant to be!) in Frambosia as a blush
Mac Dame Edna powder highlighter in Spectacle all over the face
The Too-faced blue and purple eyeshadows again
Mac Eyebrow pencil in Fling
Lancome Oscillation mascara in black
No 17 lipstick in Electric Pearl
Mac Dazzle Glass in Via Veneto

I doubt i'll win, as there are some amazing looks, but it was so much fun! I'm seriously debating entering a whole series of villains now.